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	<TITLE>Dataxi tour page 8</TITLE>
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<H1>Advanced form</H1>
<P>The title is misleading. There is nothing advanced about using one
or more tables through one form in Dataxi. The main idea<SPAN LANG="en-GB">
behind </SPAN>Dataxi is to disguise the database table structure from
the user and thus offer a very good solution for both the developer
and the user.</P>
<P>The developer can build as good a data structure as he wishes:<SPAN LANG="en-GB">
chopped </SPAN>and split into very nice set of tables, as it should.
This serves the report building very nicely. However, the user is
seldom interested in normalisation rules and master-detail table
issues and he most certainly does not want to become interested.<BR>You
can see Dataxi hiding this master-detail table in action when you
choose <B>Albums</B> from the <B>Another example menu</B> in the top
menu bar.</P>
<P><IMG SRC="albumsq.png" NAME="Graphic1" ALT="Postcodes - query mode" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=686 HEIGHT=513 BORDER=0>
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<P>This brings you to a form to query, browse and edit new or
existing albums in the database. There are not many albums in Tring
database, but enough to get the general idea.<BR>There are two new
features introduced in this view of query: an extra drop down menu in
the navigator bar that is titled Subari and the fact, that there are
visibly and truly two different tables in it: master and detail.<BR>In
fact, Dataxi does not limit the levels of relations in a form: the
developer can have as many levels - and parallel tables - as he
wishes.<BR>(Currently Dataxi cannot show more than two levels per
form as the filtering feature is not implemented to the client side,
even though it is there. Sorry.)<BR>Run a quick query, say, albums
with more than ten tracks, by entering &quot;&gt;10&quot; in the
<B>TrackNo</B> field. This should take you to<SPAN LANG="en-GB">
browse </SPAN>mode with<SPAN LANG="en-GB"> excellent </SPAN>Kasper
Winding<SPAN LANG="en-GB"> release </SPAN>called Vibe-o-gram.</P>
<H3>Editing</H3>
<P>As there are no typing errors in the track names, we could
introduce few. Press [Edit] button from the navigator bar to get to
edit mode. The form displays looking slightly different.<BR><IMG SRC="albumse.png" NAME="Graphic2" ALT="Editing albums" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=750 HEIGHT=559 BORDER=0>
<BR><BR>You can now modify any field you wish, but also add and
remove rows. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page and rows,
you can see an extra and empty row numbered as 13 (without &quot;+&quot;
and &quot;-&quot; buttons). When you start entering data to the name
field and once you exit it to the duration field, you can see an
extra<SPAN LANG="en-GB"> empty </SPAN>row appearing below your row.<BR><IMG SRC="albumsa.png" NAME="Graphic3" ALT="Adding row to album" ALIGN=BOTTOM WIDTH=750 HEIGHT=559 BORDER=0>
<BR>If you click on any &quot;+&quot; button to insert between two
rows, the last empty row disappears and appears in the place of the
row you pressed &quot;+&quot; button at. Only when all the required
fields are filled in this extra row, the row is<SPAN LANG="en-GB">
committed </SPAN>and a new extra row appears back to the end of the
rows.<BR>In the albums form only <B>TrackNo</B> is required and hence
it has been define auto-numbered, &nbsp;any field filled on the extra
row commits it.</P>
<H3><SPAN LANG="en-GB">Committing</SPAN> changes</H3>
<P>It is very important to realise, that editing new or existing
record set does <B>not</B> affect the data in the database tables
until [Commit] button is pressed. When you first pressed the [Edit]
button, a lock was placed in Dataxi system table for this record set
and any other attempt to edit it will fail. When [Commit] is pressed,
the rows are written back to database, the lock is released and the
user is taken back to browse mode with the same record set. 
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<P><A HREF="tour09.html">Click here to the next page -&gt;</A></P>
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